/tg/Station 13

One thing that never made sense to me is why in a highly-regimented environment like SS13, the officers (heads, captain) don't have their own dining hall. That got me to thinking about a few other things, and eventually to an idea for an overhaul of how the food and drink placement works.

My idea is to have four "kitchens" - the Maltese Falcon (existing), and three others: the Hound and Tap, the Grey Tide, and Cafe L'Mime

The Hound and Tap is an old-time English pub (whose mascot is, of course, Ian) replacing the Heads of Staff Meeting Room. It contains a food replicator capable of dispensing low-nutriment "classy" food (space carp caviar, anyone?) as well as a small Lady and the Tramp style table for Ian and Lisa. Unlike the meeting room, it would have a door leading into the hallway. Access would be given to the heads and captain, as well as the Chef and Barman so they can deliver food and drink there. Also should probably contain a mounted and stuffed space bear head.

In contrast, The Grey Tide is a seedy, run-down makeshift bar (think the secret breakroom in "Employee of the Month") located in maintenance (where the ghetto surgery area is now). While it has lights and a security camera, the camera starts de-activated, making it a great place for lings and/or traitors to murder people and for barfights between assistants that the AI/sec can't see. The door to the Grey Tide ideally blocks anyone with Sec access, except the Captain, from entering and meta-gaming. The drinks here are purely to get drunk off of - think Space Keystone or Space PBR. No waitstaff actually serve the Grey Tide - it's run purely by assistants.

Cafe L'Mime is a cafe that takes the place of the Arrivals Lounge, and is connected to a small garden full of soil straight from Space France, perfect for planting coffee beans and tea. The coffee here would be sort of like the Barman's drinks, in that they can have things added to them to give small buffs. Cafe L'Mime would be staffed by a second, snootier French chef.

My other thought was to make the Chef and Barman mini-heads (sort of like the QM), where they'd have command over Botany and the four restaurants on station. This would allow the Chef to both oversee food production, and would make him a more valuable rev target (since he can open the door to the Hound and Tap and provide a secondary way to hack into the bridge). The Chef could also go full-on Gordon Ramsey and complain loudly at Botany/the other food service workers how bad their food is.

Bar/Chef/Botany are already pretty neglected - I honestly can't see this as anything other than making more seldom-used areas of the station. That said, making flavorful but seldom-used areas of the station for their own sake is perfectly fine.

The arrivals lounge is already a good place for Cafe de Mime, Metastation already has a Maintbar that could be turned into The Grey Tide - Heck, just copy-paste booze vendor code, re-name the machine and remove ID restriction on it.

Well, the way I see it is, there's four areas on the station right now where you can get food from vending machines (that I'm aware of), those being the ones outside Arrivals, the ones outside Gravity Generator, the one in Medbay, and if I remember right the one in or near the Brig. If vending machines were removed entirely with this (or moved into the four new areas) it would make these areas major combat zones - wait until your target needs to eat, then murder him. It would also make the Chef and Barman more important, in that they can take a bomb from revo science and open the Hound and Tap, then place a bomb to explode the bridge from there.

The reason the bar is a major combat zone is not, in fact, because of the food. It's because the bar is a crew sink - It's a place to go to do stuff that isn't your job. The chapel and library are also this, but perpetually suffer from being out of the way, while the bar is always on the central primary hall.

Timrod wrote:If vending machines were removed entirely with this (or moved into the four new areas) it would make these areas major combat zones -

I can't be the only one who would love to see more bar fights.

Man I wish we could have a boxstation maintbar. That sounds fucking awesome.

Stickymayhem wrote:Man I wish we could have a boxstation maintbar. That sounds fucking awesome.

Who says we can't.

Steelpoint wrote:

Stickymayhem wrote:Man I wish we could have a boxstation maintbar. That sounds fucking awesome.

Who says we can't.

I will love you forever if you make it happen. You are the hero boxstation needs.

While I would love to see the vending machines gone, I can't agree with 4 bars. I mean come on, we frequently can't fill 1 Barman and 1 Chef. And the entire point of the bar is that you can expect to find people there. With 4 bars, each one would basically be empty.

It would be really sweet to have different themes for the Maltese Falcon though. And of course a shitty, run-down maint bar would be kind of nice, assuming it needs repairs to be barely functional.

Make booze give you slight buffs and heals.

Oh look, the bar is full of people!

On a serious note, I agree with what was said before: we barely can maintain one bar and kitchen, no way we can maintain more.

MisterPerson wrote:While I would love to see the vending machines gone, I can't agree with 4 bars. I mean come on, we frequently can't fill 1 Barman and 1 Chef. And the entire point of the bar is that you can expect to find people there. With 4 bars, each one would basically be empty.

Rather than nerfing the crap out of vending machines and seeing everyone starve, I'd rather just see them centralized in the (single) bar area. It makes the area fulfill its duty as both a social area and a Place To Eat Things.
People have had this idea in the past that having vending machines near the chef makes him less useful... What I see happening instead is people heading to the vending machines and seeing the chef's spread first and eating that... or walking past and getting raisins if he's making monkey chunk soup.

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:Make booze give you slight buffs and heals.

What should those buffs be, though? We don't really have many stats to boost. There's, uh, runspeed and health. Drinks giving heals is already there, in the form of fruit juice and doctor's delight - the latter of which got so popular the recipe was changed because the bartender was crapping out better healing chems than the actual medical department.
I like vodka's effect a lot, which is removing radiation. Radiation isn't used very often, so it's not game-breaking or anything but if you have some on-hand it can really help.

Cheridan wrote:What should those buffs be, though? We don't really have many stats to boost. There's, uh, runspeed and health. Drinks giving heals is already there, in the form of fruit juice and doctor's delight - the latter of which got so popular the recipe was changed because the bartender was crapping out better healing chems than the actual medical department.
I like vodka's effect a lot, which is removing radiation. Radiation isn't used very often, so it's not game-breaking or anything but if you have some on-hand it can really help.

Oh my God, are you actually serious?

Yeah, everything above

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:On a serious note

was totally not a joke.

Vodka removes radiation? Gah, we find references everyday.
That said, wheres the vodka...

Cheridan wrote: Rather than nerfing the crap out of vending machines and seeing everyone starve, I'd rather just see them centralized in the (single) bar area. It makes the area fulfill its duty as both a social area and a Place To Eat Things.
People have had this idea in the past that having vending machines near the chef makes him less useful... What I see happening instead is people heading to the vending machines and seeing the chef's spread first and eating that... or walking past and getting raisins if he's making monkey chunk soup.

I really like this as a solution. Doesn't cooked food generally have more nutrition per bite, anyway?

I know we've discussed food giving buffs/heals to death, but for now this would be an excellent and simple solution. The only caveat would be what to do if the bar/kitchen area got destroyed, but heck, isn't the danger the point of all this?

Could always make eating more important by increasing the rate at which you get hungry. Considering /tg/ rounds are shorter than most. Then buff more complicated foods made by the Chef to satiate hunger for longer.

Dont like the idea of making drink and food apply buffs much anymore. Things like that should be reserved for the rarer, more complicated drinks/foods.

Alex Crimson wrote:Could always make eating more important by increasing the rate at which you get hungry.

This will only serve to annoy people at best. I think moving the vending machines to the bar is probably our best option.

Just add more vending machines.

That only creates more problems. Why make eating more important if you're just going to add more redundant vending machines?

why the fuck are there still so many vending machines

Reimoo wrote:

Alex Crimson wrote:Could always make eating more important by increasing the rate at which you get hungry.

This will only serve to annoy people at best. I think moving the vending machines to the bar is probably our best option.

Moving the Vending Machines doesnt change the fact that its a 100% better option than getting food from the Chef. You could replace the Kitchen with a row and Vending Machines and nobody would care. People would probably actually prefer it to the possibly dangerous foods the Chef makes. Sure people will eat your food if its on the serving table and they wonder past, but most of the time its just easier to rely on a machine to give you food rather than another player.

Let traitor Chefs get an item that replaces all food in a vending machine with lethally poisoned stuff. That will teach em.

better idea: vending machine foods give you diabetes

Could start the vending machines out empty (or nearly empty) and force cargo/the janitor/whoever to restock them.

There's also options to make the vending machine food dangerous itself, something like what Terbs suggested perhaps, or simply cause some toxin damage, I dunno. There just needs to be a game-provided, non-RP reason to choose chef food over vending food.

Well, most vended fooda allready do almost squat, right?

AseaHeru wrote:Well, most vended fooda allready do almost squat, right?

fuck no, raisins are OP as fuck, i carry around 3 boxes when i go to the derelict and they last an entire round

Alex Crimson wrote:

Reimoo wrote:

Alex Crimson wrote:Could always make eating more important by increasing the rate at which you get hungry.

This will only serve to annoy people at best. I think moving the vending machines to the bar is probably our best option.

Moving the Vending Machines doesnt change the fact that its a 100% better option than getting food from the Chef. You could replace the Kitchen with a row and Vending Machines and nobody would care. People would probably actually prefer it to the possibly dangerous foods the Chef makes. Sure people will eat your food if its on the serving table and they wonder past, but most of the time its just easier to rely on a machine to give you food rather than another player.

Let traitor Chefs get an item that replaces all food in a vending machine with lethally poisoned stuff. That will teach em.

I actually had an idea about this, not too complicated, of letting anyone pour chems into a hacked-open vending machine to lace the food inside.

But then I got bogged down in a system for the machine fabricating food on command out of nutriment and other reagents, and didn't act on it. It might be my next project after the freeze ends, though.

Rolan7 wrote:I actually had an idea about this, not too complicated, of letting anyone pour chems into a hacked-open vending machine to lace the food inside.

But then I got bogged down in a system for the machine fabricating food on command out of nutriment and other reagents, and didn't act on it. It might be my next project after the freeze ends, though.

Holy shit. This is amazing.

TheTerbs wrote:

AseaHeru wrote:Well, most vended fooda allready do almost squat, right?

fuck no, raisins are OP as fuck, i carry around 3 boxes when i go to the derelict and they last an entire round

I meant like candy, chips or jerky.

Candy and Chips are not great. The Jerky isnt bad as far as i know. Regardless, there is more than enough food in the Vending Machines to sustain the station even in the longer rounds.

Perhaps we simply need to nerf the amount of food in the vending machines?

Lets merge the vending machine issue with the bar thing lets add in the 3 new bars and have it so the vending machines and spread out between the three those are the only places apart from a garden or botany that you can get food at.

It would also make sense to then add a small garden to each bar even in a small room behind it just for the odd guy who wants to do a bit of farming for a certain bar.

The bigger suggestion I have is really merge the librarian with one of these places because then the librarian can be a peseudo bartender and have a actual reason beyond griff and woody's got wood to exist most rounds.

Heck do the same with the chaplain would be a tropico game reference.

Removing vending machines from around the station/making them scarce is NOT how you buff kitchen. It just makes people mad at map editors and I would rather walk around hungry than eat food that could be poisoned from the kitchen. Add a better system of kitchen food vending that makes it harder to drive by poison shit as a non-chef and the amount of people that eat kitchen food will skyrocket.

Make it like a smartfridge, a chef can load prepared meals into his smartfridge which can be accessed by other smartfridges from around the station using bluespace technology or something. If people want to eat at the kitchen, they can use the fridge there, and if they want something specialty, the chef can just prepare it for them directly. Smartfridges around the station can -replace- a lot of inner-departmental vending machines, as the chef can load them with new things remotely and check the stock of food as well as cook unique things. People on the job can go to their breakroom, look at what's on the menu, and eat in their department without having to walk to the kitchen. Vending machines can still remain in the hallways for junk food if you're a pleb who eats raisins.

Also, remove plates from food sprites, make plates an actual thing that the chef can put food on and use a dishwasher to clean and stuff. Not unlike trays. If you want to overhaul food you have to start at the basic stuff, consider how real food distribution on a space station would work as well as classic dining techniques, and apply that, instead of just 'adding more shit' like goofball did with fryers and ovens on NT.

What if the chef could load his food into vending machines?

That's essentially what I'm suggesting but remote. If it was coupled with other, normal vending machine products, nobody would take it over normal vending food because normal food will never, ever be poisoned. Unless the chef dispenses the food, poisons it, and puts it back in, which I guess would be cool but there's too many vending machines for that to be an interesting thing and we already have automatic restockers.

I wish that the cook could mail food to departments, perhaps after getting an order via the request console.

Infact, if when requesting something via console the console spits out a mail card to the requesting area, that would just be awesome, and would remove some small quanity of proposed snowflake...

There was an idea suggested a while ago that I really liked that the chef could make food "to-go" by having crewmembers place their orders at the counter and when the food is ready, he can ship them off in little bags via the disposals or get assistants to deliver them.

Yah, but how do you mail them down? Give them a mail scanner? Trust cargo to actually sort shit?
Or buff the thing that few people even know exists.

Timrod wrote: My other thought was to make the Chef and Barman mini-heads (sort of like the QM), where they'd have command over Botany.

No.

AseaHeru wrote:Yah, but how do you mail them down? Give them a mail scanner? Trust cargo to actually sort shit?
Or buff the thing that few people even know exists.

Oh jeez oh man I NEED TO KNOW I HAVE TO KNOW